veneering help

Someone gave me several lengths of mahogany veneer a few years ago—the pieces were around 8 ft long and varying widths—one 12+ inches, another 10” or so, and each length was made up of smaller widths that were joined with glue in a zig zag pattern across the seam. It looked almost like thread (but I have since figured out it’s just glue). Anyway, I had never done anything with veneer before, and I am familiar with hot hide glue because I worked in a frame shop where it was used, so that’s what I used to glue it down. Here’s my question, and I did a lot of reading about veneering but never came across this:

I veneered the strips with the zig zag joints on the top face. It’s been tough getting the joint glue off, but I’ve been using very hot water and scraping and have gotten most of it. It left a light zig zag pattern on the wood. One of the veneer books talked about joint tape being left on too long that would keep the wood from darkening in that area. Is that the problem here? My husband said I should have glued the veneer with the glued seams down, but I figured it was bulky enough to cause problems.

I’m making a desk in a kitchen nook, so I veneered a 3/4 inch plywood slab that I cut to fit into the space. it will probably be covered by paper, mail, a computer and the hamster cage—eventually—but I’d still like it to look halfway decent.

Any thoughts? I would appreciate it! And if I have to peel the whole thing off and turn it over, I will (I haven’t trimmed it yet).

Thank you!

Sarah

3 replies so far

It’s not clear what your problem is. Is it the remaining zig-zag pattern? Lighter color near the seam?How thick is the veneer?I do a lot of veneering with hot hide glue and I’d like to help but I’m not sure what you need.Could you post photos to help explain?

Paul, Thanks for looking at this. I’ve included pictures of the project and the problem, which I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to see right off the bat. Plus a picture of the veneer before it was glued on. I’ve since done some googling, and discovered that the zigzag seam is made by a machine that used fiberglass thread and glue, and was meant to be glued with the seam on the glue face. I’ve scraped and sanded and hot water-washed off as much of the seam glue as possible, but there’s still that ghost of it.I’m afraid if I pull up the strips and try to reglue it with the other face up, I will end up with a lot of long thin strips of veneer that will be madness to try to position, even if I only do a few at a time. The veneer thickness is about 0.5 mm. My latest plan is to cut out the long thin areas that encompass the seam ghosts, and glue in a long thin piece. As I said, this isn’t going to be a masterwork or anything—I just wanted to try to see what I could do. I had an old upright grand piano that I refinished into a “CD, record album, turntable, receiver” piece, and I was going to use the curved keyboard cover as a drawer front under the veneered top (because the piano has a really nice mahogany veneer on it).But this might be one of those projects that remains unrealized. Darn it.

I think your idea is good. It is a good thing you used hide glue as you should have no trouble reversing it with water and a warm (just hot to the touch) iron.My approach to get good fits would be to lay the replacement veneer over the area to be removed and cut out the offending strips with a knife through both layers at once a little narrower at one end. If you leave the new veneer a little long it can slide a bit toward the narrower end for a very tight fit. To remove the part to be discarded, soak it with water and heat it with a clothes iron. The iron should be hot to the touch but not hot enough to burn you.